


you woke the world inside of me

by strangetowns



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: 5+1 Things, Canon Compliant, M/M, Missing Scenes, Pining, Swearing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-06
Updated: 2018-11-06
Packaged: 2019-08-19 18:56:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,967
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16540247
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/strangetowns/pseuds/strangetowns
Summary: Shiro tilts his head back toward the sky, squinting at the sun. Shiro isn’t looking at him, so Keith lets himself look back for a greedy moment or two. The gentleness of his eyebrows; the slope of his cheeks. The ever-present smile tinging the corner of his mouth with something quiet and peaceful.That one. That’s one of the smiles Keith sometimes feels like he could spend his whole life chasing after.-Or: five times Keith missed Shiro, and one time he said it out loud.





	you woke the world inside of me

**Author's Note:**

  * For [arindwell](https://archiveofourown.org/users/arindwell/gifts).



> Happy birthday Arin!! A few days late and you already knew this was coming so it’s not much of a surprise lol but I hope you enjoy 10k words of pining!Keith anyway! <3
> 
> So basically this is a collection of what could theoretically pose as missing moments from canon and are currently [as of s7] as canon compliant as I could possibly make pining Keith. Here’s to hoping s8 doesn’t joss this one too badly!
> 
> Thank you as always to [Lyds](https://boxesfullofthoughts.tumblr.com/) for being the bomb dot com and an amazing beta reader. Title is from “[Like The Dawn](https://youtu.be/Hd9vh89To4M)” by The Oh Hellos.

**i.**

Keith doesn’t really know what he was expecting, for the day of Shiro’s launch. It’s not like he thought there’d be a party or something. It’s a serious occasion for a serious mission, requiring some amount of  _ decorum _ \- words he can easily imagine Iverson saying behind a closed door somewhere. He knew there wasn’t going to be fireworks, or loud cheering, or many people at all, for that matter.

But he’s sitting on the ground next to Shiro with his legs stretched out and his hands behind him. Shiro’s cross-legged, fingers absently picking at a bit of dried grass that has somehow managed to burst through the cracks of the well-worn pavement. It’s silent between them, yet comfortable.

And everything feels - so  _ normal _ . If he hadn’t been counting the days for months, the exact time still penciled in on his Garrison-issued calendar and circled three times in red - if it wasn’t for this nagging itch under his skin, faint but persistent, that inexplicable feeling he always gets when it comes to deadlines; looming, inescapable, terrible in a vague way which is, of course, the worst kind of terrible - he might not even know today was supposed to be different.

Not that he’s complaining. He’d take this over a party - whatever this is - any goddamn day of the week.

There’s a peal of laughter behind them. Keith doesn’t bother to look. It’s probably the other people on the mission, spending time with their families before they leave. He barely knows them by face, let alone by name. They’re not relevant right now. Shiro does look, though, a fond smile floating lazily across his face. As if they’ve got all the time in the world.

“You think you’re gonna get sick of ‘em in space?” Keith asks, mostly just to hear what Shiro has to say.

Shiro laughs. Already, his answer is not a disappointment.

“What, the Holts?” he says. “They’re amazing. I’m more afraid they’ll get sick of me.”

Keith snorts. “Don’t be stupid.”

Shiro smiles directly at Keith, now. He’s got a lot of smiles for all sorts of occasions, and every kind of person. Big, small and in between; running the whole gamut of positive human emotion. Almost all of them are genuine. Like this one. This one’s his smile of appreciation, the one he saves for when he doesn’t want to say thank you out loud, but he wants you to know he means it anyway. Nice smile, that one.

“And what about you?” Shiro says. “Who’s to say you won’t get sick of the Garrison while I’m gone?”

Keith rolls his eyes. “Iverson wishes it was that easy,” he drawls.

Shiro huffs out another laugh, softer this time. Still something to hold onto.

“I hope you don’t, anyway,” he says. “Who’s gonna be waiting on me to come back, if you’re not here?”

He says it lightly, so it’s probably supposed to be a joke. But Keith stiffens at the words, anyway. It’s not something they talk about a lot, not in so many words. And it’s weird to think about. Keith’s used to thinking he’s got no one except for himself on this planet. He’s had years to wrap his head around it, to turn the loneliness from a gaping hole constantly threatening to pull him down into something that drives him forward. There’s not a lot of people who can say the same, frankly, not of the ones he’s met. There’s always a partner or a parent or a sibling or even just a friend waiting for them at home. He’s gotten used to expecting that, too.

Shiro doesn’t keep his heart on his sleeve, doesn’t chafe under it, doesn’t let the anger consume the loneliness inside him like an open flame - not the way Keith does, anyway.

So it’s easy to forget, sometimes, that Shiro carries it, too.

“I’m sorry,” Keith says. “It must be hard not to have Adam here.”

Shiro’s expression barely flickers. He looks down, the only indication he even heard Keith at all.

“It’s fine,” he says quietly. “He made his choice, and I made mine. That’s all there is to it.”

It’s not, Keith knows. The official break up happened only weeks ago, though the writing’s been on the wall since Adam made it clear he didn’t want Shiro to be on this mission, and Keith has seen more smiles that aren’t real in that time period than he has in all the time he’s known Shiro. Shiro won’t talk about it, probably never will talk about it, if Keith knows him at all. He doesn’t have to. It’s painfully obvious to anyone with eyes how much it fucking hurt them to walk away from this. Even if it was something they had to do. Even if it was something  _ Shiro _ had to do.

Keith doesn’t really know how to say that, though. That it’s okay if Shiro thinks it’s hard. That it’s okay if he thinks ‘hard’ is the understatement of the century. That finding it hard doesn’t mean the choice was a mistake, or that everything that came before it was a waste of time. The thing is, he doesn’t know how much weight that would have coming from someone like him. This kind of shit - it’s so beyond his realm of expertise he might as well be in outer space, himself.

“You gonna be okay up there?” Keith settles for instead.

Shiro tilts his head back toward the sky, squinting at the sun. Shiro isn’t looking at him, so Keith lets himself look back for a greedy moment or two. The gentleness of his eyebrows; the slope of his cheeks. The ever-present smile tinging the corner of his mouth with something quiet and peaceful.

That one. That’s one of the smiles Keith sometimes feels like he could spend his whole life chasing after.

Something notches in his throat, something he can’t quite swallow around. He takes note of the feeling, the tightness in his chest, the sudden heaviness in his lungs. Files it away to remember later. He’s probably not going to feel anything much like it for a long while. On a different day, he might want to push it away. Not today.

Maybe it’s strange, to want to savor something like this before he can’t anymore.

Or maybe it’s not strange at all.

“Yeah,” Shiro says. “Yeah, I think I will.”

Keith believes him.

Shouted voices sound up behind them. Shiro looks up, and sighs. He heaves himself up with an exaggerated groan, slapping his hands against his thighs.

“That’s my cue, I think,” he says. He holds a hand in Keith’s direction.

Keith doesn’t hesitate to take it.

Shiro pulls him to his feet effortlessly, clapping him on his shoulder with his other hand. “Are you going to be okay down here?” he says with a meaningful quirk of his eyebrows.

“You don’t have to worry about me,” Keith says. “Worry about yourself, old timer.”

“Oh, that’s how it’s going to be, huh?” Shiro says, bursting into a grin.

He’s still holding Keith’s hand.

“That’s exactly how it’s gonna be,” Keith says, lifting his chin up a notch.

Shiro full on laughs. It’s easy to make him do that. The sound of it still tastes like victory.

“I’ll miss you, Keith,” Shiro says, in that warm and easy way of his. There’s no sadness attached to it, no wistfulness. Just truth.

Keith pulls his hand out of Shiro’s grip.

“I won’t miss you at all,” he says.

The corner of Shiro’s mouth quirks up. “No?”

“Nah,” Keith says. “I don’t have to, if you’re just gonna come back.”

“Geez, don’t oversell it or anything,” Shiro says. “It’s just going into space and flying to Pluto’s moon, no big deal at all.”

Keith shrugs. “But you will come back.”

“Yeah,” Shiro says. “I guess I will, won’t I?”

It’s not that long before Shiro and the rest of his team are loaded into the shuttle. By then Keith’s been ushered onto an observation deck with the rest of the friends and family who were invited to launch day. He watches as the shuttle slowly rumbles to life, as the smoke billows from its exhaust pipes and it shudders into the air, up, up, up into the stratosphere. Keith cranes his neck, keeps his eyes on it until long after it disappears into the deep blue of the cloudless sky.

He thinks about the things he didn’t say today.

Like  _ goodbye _ .

Like the number of smiles he’s already got saved like tally marks on the walls of his chest.

Like the fact that part of him started missing Shiro before he even left for Kerberos.

That sometimes it feels like that part of him, small and ugly and unjust as it is, is always missing Shiro.

It’s probably for the best, anyway. He can’t imagine what use anyone would have for words like that.

-

**ii.**

There are no words in Keith’s head at all when he kicks the door to his father’s old shack open.

He strides into the room and yanks off his gloves, pulling a hand through the knots of his hair and huffing out an irritated sigh at the emptiness in the room, all the dust. What was the point of coming here if there’s  _ nothing _ ? Isn’t that what he was trying to leave behind in the first place?

He has to do something about it, he decides, his eyes sweeping over the naked walls disdainfully. He  _ will _ do something about it. There’s a crawling itch nested uncomfortably inside his bones, ill-fitting and all-encompassing. It doesn’t belong there. Yet there it rests, filling him with a persistent sort of restlessness that he wishes he could ignore but knows that he can’t.

It used to be something he was working on. A private little project of his, how to subjugate the burning inside of him, how to control it and turn it into something that didn’t destroy everything it touched. Patience, that’s what he was trying to teach himself. Patience, and focus.

But there’s no point anymore.

He bounces on the balls of his toes, turning around to take stock of the place. No food here, he already knows that. Water and electricity aren’t going to be guaranteed. There’s some furniture, bare and slowly deteriorating with disuse, but still. That is something. Something he can start with.

So that’s where he’ll begin. Take stock of his inventory. Make sure the water and electricity are hooked up right.  Clean up the place, get the damn dust out of here.

It’s a basic plan, but it is a plan, nonetheless.

He doesn’t think while he works. Just lets muscle memory propel him forward. He holds a piece of paper against the wall so he doesn’t have to sit, writing down the things that he has and the things that he needs in an impatient scrawl, letting the words spiral into bigger and better plans. He moves furniture, his fingernails biting into the old wood as he steadfastly ignores the sweat dripping into his eyes. He runs his fingertips across the walls, counts the blemishes, memorizes the feeling of them under his skin. Lets his old memories of the shack slowly merge into his present day experience of it, until the feeling of it sinks deep down inside him and he doesn’t have to worry about forgetting how to breathe anymore.

It’s almost a trance he falls into, this narrow tunnel vision where the only thing that matters is the next thing he has to do. He’s kind of grateful for it.

By the time Keith lets himself shrug it off, the sun has long fallen below the horizon, judging from the darkness outside the window. There’s one lamp he managed to dig out from under the bed sitting on the table, plugged into the wall and bathing the room in a soft, yellow light. As he takes in the work he’s done he decides this shack is already looking a lot better. His food rations are neatly organized on the shelves, the table slotted back into place against the wall, the covers on the bed neatly made. He’s got a pretty strong feeling that he’s going to be staying here for a while, and if that’s the case there’s work he wants to do on the walls, the porch outside, maybe the roof, too. But this is a good start. It’s a place to live in. It’s not a home, but he wasn’t planning on pretending that was something he’d had since his father died, so that’s okay, all things considered.

Tomorrow he’ll ride to the store. He’s craving better food, and proper wood, and tools to do the work he wants to do. There’s a bit of money in his account that’ll cover the expenses. He’s not too worried about what’ll happen after he runs out of it, either. He’ll get a job in town, maybe bag groceries for people or man the counter at some dinky gas station. Spend the weekends working on the shack and sipping powdered lemonade on the porch. He can go out whenever he wants, now, too, make a trip to his favorite take-out place, maybe, or slink into the back of an empty theater for an early matinee, or just take his hoverbike out for a spin in the cold desert night. He can do whatever he wants. Right now his mind is a blank void, but that’s fine, that’s okay. He’s got time to figure it out.

All the time in the fucking world.

After heating up his dinner with a tiny camp cooker he’d found in the corner of the shack and shoveling it down with plastic utensils, so quickly he doesn’t even register the taste as it goes down his throat, he crashes onto the bed - ignoring the way it squeaks loudly under his weight - and folds his arms under his head. He’s - not happy, happy’s one of his least favorite words right now, maybe ever, really, if he lets himself think about it, but - grateful. Grateful this place was still waiting for him out in the desert, grateful that he can actually make something out of it. It’s not much, but he’s never needed that. He knows like he knows his own name that he’ll be okay out here.

And frankly it’s relieving to let the feeling of true freedom finally settle over him, slowly and sweetly like a quiet song. To shed the responsibilities and the rules and all the fucking expectations of the Garrison, cast it all behind and set it on fire in his mind. It’s not like he hated it there - maybe there were even some things he genuinely liked about it - but it’s been so long he’d forgotten how good it was to be alone.

Because it is. It  _ is _ good to be alone. It might ache and gnaw at his ribs now, this raw burn of absence, this gaping hole that feels as if it has no end. It might sink itself into everything inside and outside of him, might color everything with its ugly darkness. There’s even a chance it might not ever go away.

But it’s better this way. It always was.

Keith turns his face toward the window. The moon is a thin sliver of a crescent, which is kind of nice to look at. He likes it better that way. When it’s full it tends to drown everything else out, and he likes being able to count the stars. He likes being able to see them, too, and out here he can see the stars so much clearer than at the Garrison. So many things he missed about this place, so many things he didn’t have back  _ there _ . The list grows longer and longer by the minute. Maybe if he thinks of enough reasons, he’ll stop aching when he looks at the night sky, stop thinking about all the years he’d wanted to touch them, the passing time filling him up with a desire so potent some days it was almost astonishing the whole world couldn’t see the want inscribed on every inch of his skin. It was only in the last year or so he started actually letting himself believe it was possible, and that only made him want it more.

It’s fucking annoying that the thought stings, honestly. That he does hurt a little, looking at something he’s spent his whole life loving. What right does his body have feeling like that when he should be used to not getting the things he’s wanted? 

The thing is, he’s not just used to it; he’s goddamn  _ practiced _ .

And yet the hurt tugs at something in his gut. Pulling him. Compelling him. He hates that it does after everything that’s happened, would rid himself of it entirely if he could, but he can’t. He looks out into the desert, and he thinks,  _ something is calling to me _ .

“Bullshit,” Keith says out loud, and hates that it doesn’t sound as honest in the air as it should.

Still. He’s always trusted his instincts more than he’s trusted almost anyone else in the world, so this has to count for something. Doesn’t it? If he can’t have the stars, maybe he can find something else. Maybe that’s what’s waiting for him out there. Maybe it’s something that’s actually worth hoping for. Or maybe it’s just wishful thinking.

But if it’s wishful thinking, at least it won’t be anything new.

-

**iii.**

It’s nothing new to look upon Shiro’s face and realize that he knows it.

The sheer familiarity of it - of what it feels like to actually  _ look _ at him - knocks Keith hard in the chest, a cold shock that almost has him staggering backward from the gurney. The strong line of his jaw under Keith’s fingers, the soft slant of his brows, the prominent bridge of his nose. He’d know this face anywhere. He’d know it from a mile away, from a thousand miles away. He’d know it in the best of his dreams. The worst of his nightmares. 

The long and puckered scar stretching across his nose that makes Keith’s stomach twist and roil with sickened dread - that part is new. But everything else is the same. 

It’s the  _ same _ . 

And some small part of him feels like he should have forgotten - it’s been so long; fucking  _ hell _ , it’s been so long - but the other part of him, the much larger part that now compels him to take his knife from his belt and cut at the straps holding Shiro down when all else inside his body and his head fails him, that part of him knows that this is a thing he’d remember before he’d forget his own name.

For better or for worse.

In an ideal world, as Keith pulls Shiro’s arm over his shoulders and heaves him off the gurney - his gut lurches with the realization that his fingers are gripping around cold metal, not flesh - he’d pause here. He’d have the time to look at him once more,  _ really _ look at him until he got used to it. Until his breath steadied in his chest and the warmth of Shiro’s body became something he could believe in again. In an ideal world, he’d lean in close, press his forehead to Shiro’s temple and whisper a fraction of the feelings inside him to the world.  _ I thought I’d lost you. I thought I’d lost myself. _

And Shiro would open his eyes, and smile.

But this isn’t an ideal world. There are  _ people _ here, loud and pushy people shoving themselves into a mission that was supposed to be his own. There are soldiers to run from. And Shiro’s eyes stay closed.

This isn’t an ideal world. That’s nothing new, either.

So he does what he always does when faced against an imperfect world.

He moves forward.

By the time they’re on his hoverbike, he’s too busy feeling the thrill of the chase thrumming through his body to care that much about the others. He knows it would be easier if it was just him and Shiro - that’s just a given, with fewer bodies to care about - but he also knows himself. He knows, realistically, there isn’t a thing in the world that could really slow him down. Not here. Not right now.

He dives off a cliff, and in a moment suspended in air he wonders what Shiro would think to see this. Keith still hadn’t quite mastered the timing of the trick before Kerberos, so Shiro would probably recognize that Keith had practiced while he was gone. He’d probably know exactly the hard work that went into it, the dozens of repetitions, all the scrapes and the bruises and the near deaths, culminating in this singular move. Maybe he’d clap his hand on Keith’s shoulder. Maybe he’d say,  _ well done _ , in a low, pleased voice. He’d almost definitely smile, wide and unrestrained in a way Keith hasn’t allowed himself to think about for over a year.

But Keith doesn’t have to turn around to know that Shiro’s eyes are still closed.

The other guys - Lance and Pidge and Hunk, he gathers from their hasty reintroductions - are pale and shaky when they slow to a stop in front of the shack, though they’re mostly trying - and failing, he doesn’t tell them - to hide it. Except for Hunk, who keeps grabbing at his hair and saying, “I can’t believe we’re still alive. How are we still alive?” over and over again.

“Dude, what is this dump?” Lance says, squinting dubiously up at the shack. “This where you’ve been this whole time?”

That’s not worth responding to, especially not when Keith looks behind him and catches sight of Shiro. Shiro who’s stirring, finally, eyes blinking open and a low groan escaping from between his lips. In an instant - without thinking about it, really - Keith is at his side, easing him down from the bike. 

“Hey,” he says. The first word he’s said to Shiro in over a year, and it’s infuriatingly casual but he doesn’t know what else he can say. “Let’s get you inside.”

Shiro doesn’t answer. That’s okay. He doesn’t have to.

Keith takes them all inside the shack, making sure Shiro’s sitting down at the sole chair in the room and shoving some rations at the tag-alongs so they’ll shut up. That done, he rummages through the chest at the foot of the bed for some extra clothes. There’s not a shot in hell any of his own shirts are going to fit Shiro, so his dad’s old jacket is going to have to do. He turns back around, and everything else blurs away when he registers the sight of Shiro hunched over in his seat with his head in his hands.

Keith’s heart does something horribly treacherous inside his chest. Forcing himself to take a long and deep breath, he clutches his hands tighter around the fabric of the jacket and walks up to Shiro, kneeling in front of him.

“You can wear this, if you want,” Keith says quietly. “Do you want to?”

Shiro straightens, gaze meeting Keith’s briefly before turning downward again. He takes Keith’s offering, fingers brushing lightly over the seams.

“Yeah, sure,” he says, voice coming out in a soft rasp. From disuse, maybe. Or exhaustion. Or both. He pinches the fabric of his own shirt and holds it an inch from his body. “This isn’t exactly the height of fashion, is it?”

The comment pulls a short laugh out of Keith. He didn’t expect it, had almost forgotten that easy way Shiro had of tugging at the laughter inside of him when ordinarily it was something he kept a very tight grip on. He doesn’t mind it, really, not when Shiro’s the one doing it. It makes him feel oddly light, in a good but unfamiliar way.

Shiro’s lips quirk into the smallest smile, so faint it’s barely there. But Keith knows his smiles, knows that mouth; he knows it for what it truly is. The recognition pounds through his veins, that stupidly exhilarating feeling of catching another smile he can add to his private catalogue. It’s been so long he’s nearly giddy with it.

“You look fine,” Keith says, marveling a little at how steady the words come out. “But whatever makes you more comfortable.”

Shiro swallows. “My head hurts,” he says.

As he says the words, the rest of the room comes filtering in, slowly at first, and then in a rush that makes Keith wince. Shouted voices, the clatter of bowls against his table, repeated calls to “calm down, everyone!” He glances over at the commotion and tries to process what the hell is going on. A few seconds’ observation tells him that Lance and Pidge have started a small food fight with the oatmeal, and Hunk is failing miserably at mediating. Now they’re all yelling.

It’s kind of a lot to take in. He can’t imagine how overwhelming all of this must be for Shiro, if Keith already feels halfway to drowning.

“Why don’t you go outside after you change?” Keith says. “Take your time.”

Shiro’s brows knit together. “But - there’s something we have to do…”

“Shiro,” Keith says. “Please.”

Just last week, he wouldn’t have even imagined saying that word out loud. Least of all to Shiro himself. And now without even thinking it comes out of him like a damn prayer.

Shiro must know what it means, for Keith to say something like that. Even after all this time he must know. Because he doesn’t answer. He just nods, and stands.

Keith tilts his head up. The new morning light streaming in from the window hits Shiro from behind, and for a piercing moment, Shiro’s edges gilded with gold and his face wreathed in shadow, Keith’s breath catches in his throat.

“Thanks, Keith,” Shiro says, very softly.

The words slash right through his heart.

Keith turns his gaze downward. “Take your time,” he repeats. He doesn’t look back up until he knows Shiro is gone.

It takes a while for the rest of them to notice that Shiro has left the room. “Wait,” Lance says, his head swiveling around the room. “Where’s Shiro?”

“Outside,” Keith says.

Lance moves as if to get up. “We should - ”

“Leave him alone,” Keith grits out, barely restraining himself from letting the words come out in a frustrated shout. “He’s been through enough.”

He almost expects them to protest, but they must see something in his eyes, or hear something in his voice. He tries not to feel too satisfied at the sight of them shrinking away from him - very subtly, to their credit - but he can’t help it, can’t help the savage thing inside him that says the farther people stay away from him, the better. It’s lived there for as long as he can remember.

He walks to the window as conversation tentatively resumes, not bothering to pay attention to the words. Shiro is standing upon the crest of a nearby hill, facing the slowly rising sun. In a moment Keith will come out and join him, because staying away has always been much harder than not. Maybe he’ll say something like  _ It’s good to have you back _ , which is true and not anywhere close to being adequate but still better than most of the words spinning around in his head. Maybe he’ll touch him, on the shoulder or the arm or somewhere similarly innocuous. Maybe he’ll say and do nothing at all, and just let the silence speak for him.

Whatever he does, it’ll happen later. For now he looks. Just looks. He wonders if he should feel guilty for it, but he doesn’t, not really, not now that he actually has the time to. And anyway, it’s not like Shiro can see, right? It’s not like he ever has before. 

So he looks at Shiro. The long, sharp edges of his body. The bare skin at the back of his neck. So much of him looks the same, which kind of hurts Keith’s head to think about when so much has changed since Shiro left - when  _ Keith _ has changed so much. 

But so much of him doesn’t, at the same time, which also kind of hurts to think about, in a different way. His shoulders are broader than Keith remembered, which makes him wonder what exactly happened to Shiro out there. The scar, the shock of silver hair hanging into his forehead, the cold and alien metal of his right arm. Keith can’t for the life of him imagine any of that amounting to anything good.

His throat aches, kind of in the same way it does when he stands under the infinite night sky and thinks of the places he’ll never go, the galaxies he’ll never get to touch. His heart hurts. Which just seems kind of silly, when Shiro is so close and the stars are so far away. But even as he thinks it, he knows it isn’t silly at all.

Because here Shiro is, standing right in front of him, alive and well and not buried on some hell-spawned moon halfway across the solar system. And this isn’t a dream, and this isn’t a nightmare. This is fucking real. This is the realest thing Keith has felt in a long time.

Here he is, and here they are. Miracles in themselves. And yet they’ve said very little to each other, after all this time, and there’s not much Keith can say to Shiro when the others are there to listen. Even if they weren’t, there still isn’t a lot. Even if it was just them, just Shiro and him, he thinks he’d still feel this lost.

It’s not silly. If it was, Keith would be laughing.

-

**iv.**

Keith can’t repress a laugh at the dumbstruck look on Shiro’s face, blurred as it is in the video transmission. It’s not that funny coming at the tail end of a detailed account of his last mission with Kolivan, so maybe he should be annoyed that Shiro could pull it out of him without even trying. He finds that he’s not. Which is far from a surprise at this point.

“Geez,” Shiro says. “Marmora missions sound intense.”

Keith shrugs easily. He leans back in his seat, propping his feet up against the console and twirling his knife lazily in his hands. “No one died this time,” he said. “I only came close  _ once _ .”

Shiro’s brows knit together, and for a moment Keith is almost worried he went too far. Another moment passes and the feeling is swiftly replaced with irritation. So Shiro’s allowed to make morbid as fuck quips whenever he wants, making nonchalant comments about widening wounds and transferring leadership responsibilities as easily as reading off his grocery list, but Keith can’t joke about dying  _ once _ ? 

A beat of silence passes, and Shiro’s forehead smooths out. Just like that, the surge of annoyance in Keith’s throat is gone as quickly as it came. Which is annoying in itself.

“I’m glad,” Shiro says, and even though Keith knows he knows it’s a joke, it still comes out sounding far too sincere.

Keith wants to sigh, but he doesn’t want Shiro to hear it, so in the end he just tightens his grip around the knife and digs his fingernails into the skin of his palm. He allows himself a moment - just one, nothing too long - to hate this. Not the act of talking to Shiro, not when he’s lucky to have even an hour with him these days. But - this. This awkwardness between them, not omnipresent but flaring up frequently enough he feels the sting of it keenly under his skin. When you can only see a person from the shoulders up, it’s hard to read their body language. When the footage is being transmitted across ten galaxies and encrypted five ways to hell and back, when it’s perpetually marred with static and hiccupy interruptions, it’s hard to catch all the nuances of their facial expressions. Hard to know what he’s allowed to say, and what he isn’t.

Though maybe it’s not entirely fair to blame it all on the distance. It’s not like he found it easy before he left. 

Here’s the crux of it, then. Talking to people is hard. Talking to Shiro shouldn’t be. When it is it just feels  _ wrong _ . And that’s what he hates.

Shiro clears his throat. Belatedly, Keith realizes that the silence has stretched on for a few seconds too long. 

“So what else has been going on with you?” Shiro asks.

Keith tilts his blade away from him, keeping his gaze on the peculiar way the dim light of the room glints off it. “I managed to catch the last broadcast of the Voltron show,” he says. “It’s very riveting stuff.”

Shiro’s answering laugh sounds a little like a groan. Keith decides he’ll take it.

“I didn’t know you can get cable in the middle of a black hole,” Shiro says.

Keith lets a grin flash across his face. Just for a second, but it’s always been too easy to relinquish them to Shiro, and he’s never regretted that. 

“Two black holes,” Keith reminds him. “And can you believe it’s the most interesting thing we get out here?”

“That’s dire,” Shiro says gravely. Keith laughs again, and this time he doesn’t even have to let himself. Just like that, like a flipped switch, things make sense between them again. He likes it like that. When they aren’t talking about anything that matters, like life, or war, or death. When they aren’t talking about anything at all. It’s easier, that way. It hurts less.

“It’s good,” Keith says. “I like it. Whatever Coran’s having you guys do, it’s working.”

“You’re only saying that because you don’t have to do it,” Shiro accuses, the smile tugging at the corner of his lips belying his exaggeratedly offended tone. It’s a smile that lights up his eyes with a familiar sort of mischief, the kind that after all this time still flares up every now and then, maybe a bit less than Keith would like but still there. The kind that lets you know he’s in on the joke. Keith would think it’s one of his favorite Shiro smiles, but frankly speaking there are a lot of those.

Frankly speaking it might be nearly all of them.

“What do you mean?” Keith says. “I’ve always wanted to put a box on my head and yell cheesy lines at my friends in front of millions of people.”

“So what you’re saying is,” Shiro says, “if you were here, you’d be more than happy to take my place in the show.”

“ _ Fuck _ no.”

Shiro snorts and presses his hand to his mouth, his shoulders shaking. Keith almost wishes he wouldn’t.

His shoulders still, eventually, and his expression grows serious. Keith lets his gaze linger across his face, and away again. It’s a video chat, so it’s not like Shiro would know for sure how much Keith was looking at him. Still, old habits die hard.

“We all miss you,” Shiro says quietly. “I don’t know that any of them would say it, but - that’s why I’m saying it now. So you’ll know.”

_ We _ . Keith turns the word around in his head, lets it sit heavily in his chest.

It would be easy - almost frighteningly so - to let himself say something snide and snappish in response. He thinks if it was Hunk or Pidge or Lance - god forbid - saying something like that, he probably would. They’re not the ones saying it, though. Which makes sense. His friends - he, himself - they’re all people who like to move on, to leave the past alone so they can live in the present. To let their actions speak louder than words. He’d never say it to them, either. He just lets the fact that he has never missed a scheduled call, not even by a second, speak for itself.

Figures that Shiro wouldn’t settle for that. He’s a man of action, too, like the rest of them. Actually does things when he knows he has to. But to Keith, his words are just as loud.

“I miss you all, too,” Keith says. Just because he’d never say it to the others doesn’t mean he’d never say it to Shiro. The words fit strangely in his mouth, making the back of his neck prickle with discomfort just from the sheer unfamiliarity, but it’s worth it for the bright smile that bursts across Shiro’s face. He can’t resist drinking in the sight of Shiro now, the way his grin lights up his eyes with a captivating sort of fire. Keith takes hold of it, pulls it into his heart, wraps himself hungrily around it like his insides are a cold and bitter winter. Technically speaking it’s all pixels and lines of code, a mere facsimile of the real thing, but in this moment Keith couldn’t give less of a shit. Beggars can’t be choosers, after all.

And hell if what he begs for isn’t magnificent on its own.

“Really?” Shiro says.

“Why do you sound so surprised?” Keith snorts. “Thought it was just a given. But it’s good for me to be here.”

Shiro nods, humming in consideration. “If it’s good for you, then I’m glad,” he says. “Still. It’s not the same without you.”

And maybe that’s for the best.

“I’d hope not,” Keith says. “I’m pretty special.”

Shiro laughs freely. “You really are,” he agrees, in an easy way that kind of feels like a punch to the solar plexus. “Anyway, I can bring them over now, if you want. It was just me to start with because they’re all busy getting ready for the show, but I’m sure Coran will let us have a couple minutes with you.”

Keith leans back in his chair farther, letting his knife rest in his lap as he cradles his neck with his arms. “Sure,” he says. “No one’s using this room for at least another half hour.”

“Great,” Shiro says. He stands up, face no longer in frame, and gives the camera a thumbs up. “Be back before you know it.”

And then, true to his word, he’s gone.

Keith stares at the empty screen for a long moment. Then, slowly, he turns his eyes toward the ceiling. The silence Shiro left in his wake is one he’d like to get comfortable in, in these precious few minutes before it’ll be gone again. Savoring the gifts Shiro doesn’t know he leaves him has gotten harder and harder with each passing month, each new person and mission and objective that divides both their attentions, but that’s okay. He’s practiced looking out the corner of his eye for half his life.

One day, he thinks. One day he’ll stop hiding behind a word like  _ We _ .

For a glorious sliver of a second he can almost believe it’s not a stupid dream.

-

**v.**

Keith is starting to get really fucking tired of seeing the future in his dreams.

Krolia’s sitting by the fire when he opens his eyes. She doesn’t look toward him, even though he knows she probably heard his breathing change. Keith wonders if she can hear the near deafening beat of his heart, throat throbbing and lungs tight and coiled in his chest. It almost feels like she should.

“Do you want some food?” she says.

Keith straightens up, rubbing at his eyes. His fingertips come away slightly wet. He hopes to god it’s sweat.

“Yeah, sure,” he grunts out, crawling over to Krolia’s side. Wordlessly she hands him a stick with a steaming hunk of meat skewered on the end. He turns it over in his hand, its purple juices glistening in the light of the flames. He brings it to his mouth and starts to chew.

He’s at home in this silence. Krolia’s like him in that she finds value in it too, because how could silence possibly be worse than words that don’t mean anything at all? He doesn’t have to wonder if he’s inadvertently pissed her off, doesn’t have to play guessing games to try to figure out what to say next. Next to her, he can just breathe.

Usually, anyway. Right now there’s a question inside his head. It started off as a tiny nagging seed, easily pushed away. But each second that passes by jostles against it, nudges it just a little out of place, so that sooner rather than later it’s clattering loudly against the walls of his brain, far too loud to ignore anymore. He doesn’t want to ask it but he knows he has to.

He swallows down his current mouthful of food. Better to get it over with, then, if he’s going to do it. 

“Did you see that?” he says, forcing his voice into something that halfway resembles calm. It’s a poor act, but at least he’s trying.

There’s a beat of silence. Then -

“Yes,” Krolia says, simply.

The breath seeps right out of him at that. He knew it wasn’t just a dream, but thinking it to himself and hearing it confirmed are two very different things.

“So it’s going to happen,” he says. “At some point in the future I’m going to fight Shiro.”

Krolia doesn’t answer. She’s seen enough glimpses of Keith’s past and future to know who he’s talking about, and to know what exactly this means to him. He doesn’t need to say a damn thing.

He doesn’t know if he can say anything about it right now, either. In the present silence, the memory of the vision fills his head up to the brim, inescapable. It almost felt real, heartstoppingly and unfairly real. The harshness of the breath in his lungs. The inhuman glow in Shiro’s eyes. The way Shiro’s arm clashed into his sword so hard he could feel the impact of it reverberating through his entire body.

Keith’s seen it before, a few times. Different visions of Shiro running toward him and swinging his arm at him, but judging from the shape of the platform and the violet of the sky, it has to be glimpses of the same fight. What’s missing are the words, aside from vague echoes of shouted speech -  _ it’s going to be okay _ , meaningless to him in the present; Shiro growling out something indecipherable; himself yelling out Shiro’s name, most of all. What’s missing are the explanations.

He doesn’t know how it ends, either. He genuinely doesn’t know if that’s for the better or for the worse.

“There’s no changing it, is there?” he says, his grip tightening around the stick in his hand. The feeling of resignation settles over his shoulders in a familiar weight.

Krolia tilts her head as she looks at him. “Would you want to?”

Keith doesn’t know how to answer that question in a safe way - for his sake more than for his mother’s, because at this point he trusts her more than he trusts his own treacherous heart. He turns his eyes back to the fire and watches the way it sparks in the air, the flames eating up its own ashes.

“I don’t know,” he settles for, finally. “I just don’t understand how we got there.”

He hasn’t seen Shiro - any of the other Paladins, really - in a while. He and his mother have been stuck on this -  _ creature _ \- for a few months, at least, and before then it had already been some time. And out here, there aren’t video calls or transmissions to soothe the edge of the burning in his chest. Just fading memories. Some days, it’s almost easy to believe in the possibility of not seeing them again.

Which, theoretically, is a pretty pointless line of thinking. Objectively speaking he knows it’s easier if he doesn’t waste his time trying to figure out the puzzle of the future, to pull superficial reasons out of thin air where they don’t exist. It’s not his style, anyway, to care so much about anything other than what is happening to him today.

But times like these, when his heartbeat still hasn’t quite calmed down inside him, when the gaping hole in his chest feels more like a chasm than it ever has before, he finds it hard not to.

“It scares you,” Krolia says. She doesn’t say it like a revelation, or a question. It’s just a statement.

Keith plunges the stick into the ground - he’s suddenly lost his appetite - and wraps his arms around his knees, pulling them closer to his chest. “I’m not scared,” he mutters. “I’m not scared of anything.”

“Is it because your life is in danger?” Krolia presses gently.

He closes his eyes and inhales, the air ill-fitting in his chest.

“No,” he says. It’s the truth.

“No,” Krolia echoes. “I didn’t think so, either.”

He doesn’t really know what there is to be said to that.

“You miss your friends, don’t you?” Krolia says.

He lets his eyes open a crack, squinting at the firelight. “Yeah,” he says. “I guess I do.” Which is maybe a bit of an understatement. He’s spent so long with the feeling of missing - of space, of sheer  _ absence _ \- carving a place for itself between his ribs it’s getting hard to remember what it was like not to have that particular ache in his chest. Who he was without it.

Not that much would change, if it was gone.

“They’re good people,” Krolia says. “I can tell.”

She says it with a near unbearable kindness in her voice, so soft and understanding it almost makes him want to recoil.

“I just - I don’t want - ” A frustrated noise escapes his throat, low and strangled. He presses the heels of his hands into his eyes. “I can’t. I just can’t. Not again.”

He hates that he can’t say it, that the words are stuck in his lungs like flies in amber. He hates it with a scorching fervor that burns in his throat and makes his eyes sting. The thing is, though, he knows why they won’t come out of him. It’s because he’s spent a whole lifetime fighting them down. He’s too good at it now. Now that he actually  _ wants _ to say them, now that he knows someone who would actually get it, he fights them without even trying. The war inside him is one he can never win.

A weight falls upon his shoulder. It’s steady in its warmth, its reassurance. He doesn’t have to look to know it’s his mother’s hand; he looks, anyway.

“I know,” Krolia says quietly. “I wanted to do everything I could to protect your father, too.”

Keith’s breath hitches in his throat before he can quite stop it.

Krolia squeezes his shoulder gently. “Maybe you don’t know how it begins, or how it ends,” she says. “Maybe you don’t know how you got there, or why. Maybe you don’t know what’s going to happen after. That’s true all the time, too, about everything. But there is one thing you do know. Right?”

Keith swallows thickly. “What?”

“You will be there,” Krolia says.

He has the strength, finally, to look her in the eye at that. And it’s breathtaking, honestly, the resolve that burns in her gaze. When she says it like that, with those words, it’s hard not to believe her.

And why shouldn’t he believe her? Isn’t this just the truth? Isn’t it the truest thing he’s ever known?

Shiro can hate him all he wants, he can beat him down and hold a fucking sword to his throat but try as Keith might, he can’t even imagine walking away from him. The image just doesn’t come to him.

And that’s enough. Honest to god, he has never asked for anything else in his goddamn life.

“There’s no changing that, either,” he says. This time, it is not a question.

“No,” Krolia says with a small smile. “There’s not.”

Keith almost expects her to take her hand off his shoulder, but she doesn’t. She reaches around so that her arm squeezes around him, instead.

He lets himself lean into the embrace. It’s easier to swallow down his doubts, here. It’s easier to let his own resolve take root in his heart, next to the strength of his mother’s. He’s never had a say in what Shiro does, has never wanted it. But it brings him comfort to think of the things he does have control over - his words, his actions. Himself. 

Whatever his dreams foretell might happen days or months or years into the future. He might wait for that moment for a decade. For his whole life. In this moment, though, he already knows there is nothing in the entire universe that could change his mind.

It never has before.

-

**+i.**

Keith has never before felt as much fucking relief as he does in this moment, Shiro struggling up from the healing pod into a sitting position, hair gleaming silver in the dim lighting. He’s weak and battered and a little bruised, but - it’s him. He is here, and he is breathing, and he is alive. He’s  _ alive _ . It’s like Shiro’s sheer life force - the brightness of it, the vivacity - is tethering Keith to the ground and shooting him up into the atmosphere all at once. Like gravity; like flying.

“Okay,” he says with a firm steadiness he doesn’t feel. “We should probably leave you to rest now.”

“Yeah, there’s some things I want to work on, anyway, before we leave for Earth,” Pidge says, pushing her glasses up the bridge of her nose. “I’m going to start broadcasting a signal. Hopefully we’ll reach my dad. And we’ll need to run some tests on the lions, too, to assess the damage.”

“I can get started on repairs,” Hunk says helpfully.

“And I can take inventory,” Lance interjects, apparently determined not to be left out.

“Yes,” Allura says with a thoughtful nod. “There is important work to be done. We should all check on our lions and make sure we’re prepared for the journey.”

Even as everyone starts trickling out of the room, Keith can’t take his eyes off of Shiro, though he knows he should, knows he should join everyone else. Shiro won’t look away from him, either, and ultimately that’s what keeps him.

Keith should turn away and leave him alone now. He should.

But honestly, he kind of never wants to stop looking.

“Keith,” Shiro says in a whisper, like he barely has any air in his lungs.

“Yeah?” Keith answers. There’s not anything else he can do, at this point.

“Keith,” Shiro says again, a bit stronger this time. “Can I - can we talk?”

Keith swallows. It’s not fear he’s pushing down his throat; it isn’t.

“I…” He hesitates a beat, then nods. “Yeah.”

Shiro grips the side of the pod and hauls himself off of it. He walks to the wall and puts his back to it, sliding down until he’s fully sitting on the ground with his legs stretching out in front of him. Keith watches him the whole time, the slow and painstaking pace of his movements. Wonders if he should help. But Shiro doesn’t ask, so he doesn’t.

“Come here,” Shiro says after he’s settled in, patting the space next to him with his one hand.

Keith is generally not in the habit of refusing a thing that Shiro asks of him. He’s not about to start now. He strides over to the wall and sits, cross-legged.

Shiro doesn’t say anything for a long moment. Usually their silences are comfortable and familiar, but this one seems heavy with something - something unspoken. It occurs to Keith, the realization twisting at his gut, that this is the first time they’ve truly been alone - both conscious and unpossessed - since before Keith left to find Krolia.

For Keith, that translates to years.

“I, um…” Shiro laughs, low and hushed. “I didn’t have anything planned to say, actually. I just… didn’t want to be alone. I know that’s selfish of me.”

His honesty bruises Keith’s lungs.

“You’re not selfish,” Keith says. He keeps his eyes turned downward, on his hands. They look kind of useless just sitting there in his lap. His fingers twitch at the thought.

“Okay,” Shiro says. There’s no fight in his voice, which Keith is grateful for. He doesn’t have the strength for another fight right now. “Can I ask you something?”

_ Anything _ , Keith almost says, but that’s too dramatic, even if it’s true.

“Yeah, sure,” he says instead, resisting the urge to squeeze his hands into fists.

“How are you doing?” Shiro says, quietly.

The question is enough of a surprise that it tears a laugh out of Keith, cutting at the inside of his mouth as it comes out. “Should be asking  _ you _ that one,” he says.

Shiro grimaces. “Well,” he says. “I’m… Still trying to get used to things.”  _ Having an actual body _ , is probably what he means. “I suspect it’s going to take a while. But I can already feel myself regaining some strength, after the time in the healing pod. So basically I’m doing as well as one can be after having literally come back from the dead.”

Keith laughs again, despite himself. It hurts.

“But I figured I’d ask now,” Shiro says, “because I know no one’s going to ask you later.”

It’s patently unfair that even now, even after everything, Shiro could be so damn  _ nice _ . He has every right not to be, has every right to be selfish, as he calls it, and care about nothing but his own well-being in this moment. Yet here he is, endlessly and effortlessly good in the way he always is. And it’s tearing Keith apart at the seams, like it always does.

Which is why he can’t fight the words that want to come out of him, now. He’s already fought an impossible battle today. He’s fought two of them. He watched Shiro almost die right in front of him  _ twice _ . If none of that managed to unravel him, of course Shiro’s kindness would be the thing to undo him entirely.

“I just…” Keith lets out a jagged sigh. God, even to his own ears, he sounds tired as hell. “I can’t stop thinking about everything that’s happened.” 

As he says it, it hits him how fucking stupid it is. Because it’s over now. Shiro is okay. Nothing else matters. Nothing else  _ should _ matter.

And yet it almost feels like the danger is still there. Lingering. The possibility of losing Shiro haunts him, has been haunting him for half his life, it feels like. So maybe Keith just needs time to get used to it again, the idea that Shiro is safe and okay. 

Or maybe he’s never had enough of it.

“It’s okay to think about it,” Shiro says. Patient as always, somehow knowing exactly what Keith meant as fucking always. “What are you thinking about?”

Keith stares down at his palms. Truth be told, maybe the reason he can’t stop thinking about what happened is because he hasn’t stopped to think about it, hasn’t had the luxury to. Maybe it’s just that his regrets are finally catching up with him. 

Maybe he’ll be thinking about it for the rest of his life, just to make up for lost time.

“These hands,” he says. “They almost killed you.”

It’s the truth, the raw and ugly truth that lives inside his very bones. He’ll carry it with him forever.

And it’s a truth he almost didn’t say. It was that, or the silence. He’s carried the silence for a long time, too. He’s chosen it over the truth many times - too many times. And where has that gotten him?

Where the fuck has that gotten him?

Shiro takes in a quiet breath.

“Well,” he says, “what about  _ this _ hand?”

Slowly, he raises his clenched fist up. It wavers in the air.

Keith feels something inarticulate jump in his throat. “Shiro - ”

“You don’t have to say it,” Shiro cuts in. “That it wasn’t me. That’s not the point.”

“So what is the point?” Keith says, savagely. He can’t help the way the question rips itself out of him, wild and violent. He’s too tired for it to be any other way.

“Keith,” Shiro says, soft and beseeching in a way that makes Keith look up at him. He stretches his hand out, and Keith’s gaze drops down to his open palm. “If I remember the fight, don’t you think I’d remember what came after?”

“You…” Keith blinks. “You were unconscious.”

“But still,” Shiro says. “I remember. The skin around my wrist - it burns. Or it feels like it, anyway.”

“That sounds concerning,” Keith says, ignoring the way his own breath shudders out of him at the thought of it.

Shiro smiles. Faint, gentle, warm. Unmistakable.

He reaches out and takes Keith’s hand.

“These hands saved me,” Shiro says.

The words stun Keith into stillness. He is utterly motionless as Shiro brings his hand to his mouth, trembling breath stuttering against his skin, and grazes his lips over his knuckles.

“I love these hands,” Shiro whispers, awed and reverent.

There’s a dull roar in Keith’s chest, like so much static, so much fucking white noise. He can hardly wrap his head around this moment. He can hardly believe it’s even happening.

“Didn’t you hear me earlier?” Keith hears himself say. “We saved each other.”

The smile on Shiro’s face turns slowly into a grin. Keith’s seen it before, he knows he has. He’s got every single one of Shiro’s facial expressions memorized and filed away for safekeeping. The thing is, though, right now there’s nothing separating him from the sight of it, the feeling of it. No screens, no strangers, no hidden meanings. The realization washes over him like a gentle ocean. It’s for him, every ounce of Shiro’s joy, his admiration, his love; all for him. Keith feels utterly helpless in the face of it.

“I heard you,” Shiro says. “I heard you through everything.”

_ Everything _ . Everything.

The word burns through the very last of Keith’s willpower. He can’t resist what his body craves, can’t stop himself from reaching toward Shiro, reaching for him. Shiro reaches back, and before Keith knows it he’s climbed on top of Shiro, his knees bracketing his hips, and he’s wrapped his arms around Shiro’s shoulders, and he’s buried his face in Shiro’s neck, and he’s falling apart.

He never realized it could feel so good.

“I missed you,” he says, over and over again. He can’t stop; he doesn’t even want to at this point. “God, Shiro. I missed you.”

Shiro’s hand slides over the back of his neck, buries itself in Keith’s hair, holds on. Maybe, Keith thinks, maybe he wants to cling onto this as desperately as Keith does. It’s not as strange an idea as he thought it would be.

“You don’t have to anymore,” Shiro says roughly, and Keith knows he’s right. Shiro is not leaving him behind; he has not been left for dead; he is not halfway across the fucking universe from him. Shiro is here. Shiro is right here.

The truth of it sings inside Keith’s chest, sets it on fire. He feels for a long, glorious moment that he could turn into a star. Or at the least like he could touch one, hold it in the palms of his hands, and be okay.

But he doesn’t. He just squeezes around Shiro tighter. 

“I’m glad you’re back,” he whispers into his skin.

And it has never in his life been easier to believe in the word,  _ enough _ .

**Author's Note:**

> One of these days I WILL write a proper sheith kiss. I AM DETERMINED.
> 
> Find me on [tumblr](https://canonicallyanxious.tumblr.com/) if you’d like!


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